Joshua Keating is associate editor at Foreign Policy and the editor of the Passport blog. He has worked as a researcher, editorial assistant, and deputy Web editor since joining the FP staff in 2007. In addition to being featured in Foreign Policy, his writing has been published by the Washington Post, Newsweek International, Radio Prague, the Center for Defense Information, and Romania's Adevarul newspaper. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN International, C-Span, ABC News, Al Jazeera, NPR, BBC radio, and others. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he studied comparative politics at Oberlin College.

December 19, 2011 - 8:21 pm

For Foreign Policy‘s July/August 2010 issue, featuring our annual Failed States index, Ghanaian economist and writer George Ayittey put together a survey of the world’s dictators and tyrants — or “coconut heads” as he calls them. Suffice to say, 2011’s been a tough year for the coconuts.

Kim Jong Il (No. 1 on Ayittey’s list) has just died. Than Shwe (No. 3) resigned and his country is showing some promising signs of genuine liberalization. Muammar al-Qaddafi (No. 11) met his bloody end in Sirte. Hosni Mubarak (No. 15) was forced from power and is on trial. Add to that, the ongoing protests against Bashar al-Assad (No. 12), Hugo Chavez’s (No. 17) cancer diagnosis, and a grim year for Omar al-Bashir (No. 4) in which he saw his country literally break in two.

Even a few coconuts that didn’t make Ayittey’s list fell. There was Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali who kicked off the year by fleeing to the Gulf. Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh — technically the world’s longest-serving ruler after the death of Qaddafi — has agreed to step down. Aspiring strongman Laurent Gbagbo of Cote D’Ivoire was forced from power as well.

Going through the rest of the list we see Robert Mugabe and Raul Castro, both in their 80s. The former will face another controversial election next year and the latter is attempting to keep a lid on things while opening up his country’s economy. Belarus’ Aleksandr Lukashenko is looking wobblier than he has in a long time. The past month has seen the most significant protests in recent memory in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan.

This isn’t necessarily to say that the world’s become more democratic this year, none of these countries are exactly guaranteed a democratic future, and in some, the possibility seems pretty remote. But it’s been a terrible year for the world’s longtime strongmen — which is good news for everyone else.

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Colum Lynch is Foreign Policy's award-winning U.N.-based senior diplomatic reporter. Lynch previously wrote Foreign Policy's Turtle Bay blog, for which he was awarded the 2011 National Magazine Award for best reporting in digital media. He is also a recipient of the 2013 Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Silver Prize for his coverage of the United Nations.

Before moving to Foreign Policy, Lynch reported on diplomacy and national security for the Washington Post for more than a decade. As the Washington Post's United Nations reporter, Lynch had been involved in the paper's diplomatic coverage of crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Somalia, as well as the nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea. He also played a key part in the Post's diplomatic reporting on the Iraq war, the International Criminal Court, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and U.S. counterterrorism strategy.
Lynch's enterprise reporting has explored the underside of international diplomacy. His investigations have uncovered a U.S. spying operation in Iraq, Dick Cheney's former company's financial links to Saddam Hussein, and documented numerous sexual misconduct and corruption scandals.

Lynch has appeared frequently on the Lehrer News Hour, MSNBC, NPR radio, and the BBC. He has also moderated public discussions on foreign policy, including interviews with Susan E. Rice, the U.S. National Security Advisor, Gerard Araud, France's U.N. ambassador, and other senior diplomatic leaders.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Lynch received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985 and a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1987. He previously worked for the Boston Globe.